Our Week – June 5

writingThis has been a week of celebration and hard work. It is amazing to realize that in six and a half days the 2014-2015 school year will be over. This week the children worked to build their digital portfolios. They’ve been sorting through the work they’ve collected all year and preparing themselves to present this to you. They can see their growth and effort in the work they have collected. Many of them are surprised, pleased and proud of what they’ve done as they should be. I am so glad we have this tradition of stopping to take note so that each child has a sense of accomplishment. They see the results of their effort and have an awareness of next learning steps as well.

building portfolioBuilding Portfolios

The children used the fall work they shared with you at their goal setting conferences in November as their anchor for launching the portfolios. Their goal is to document what has been important to them this year and to share how they have changed as learners. They have looked through their work and selected what they feel documents the accomplishments they are most proud of.

It is interesting to see what is important to each of them and how they feel about their growing abilities and independence. It is interesting to be an observer of this process and to notice which children are able to consider an audience other than themselves or one in a future time. Developmentally 8 and 9-year olds are just beginning to recognize the benefit of thinking about their thinking. They are beginning to analyze the steps of their learning process to repeat what worked well and the change what might lead to a better outcome.

Information Writing and Page Design

Almost all of the writing is completed for our class magazine and the children are working to design their pages. Our magazine shares informational narrative and poetry written to teach others about the animals they researched from their states. Some of the children wrote the stories in a question and answer format. Others wrote in first person and still others used a diary format to share the information. We hope to have this finished by the beginning of next week so we can make copies for each family in the class. It will be fun to read each other’s work and learn about the animals important in the state we studied.

Food Chains

Coinciding with this writing work, the children have also completed the artwork and steps of the food chain or food web featuring their animals. All of the children understand how things work in the natural world from sun to decomposers. It is interesting to see if the children were able to imagine their animal in any other place than the top of the food chain.gratitudegratitude

Bits and Pieces –

  • Our quilt of gratitude and kindness is nearly completed too. Today we are putting the borders on the squares. We’ll be using halves, thirds, fourths, and sixths to create the patterns for each square. We are looking forward to sharing this with you when you come for our conferences.

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  • The children continue to amaze me with the work to understand division and fractions. Many of them are eagerly working through two and three step problems. They are noticing that they are understanding and learning more and more.
  • Blogging – several of the children have talked about blogs and blogging over the summer. I hope the children, with your permission, will continue to write posts over the summer. I will continue to post book reviews on Monday, math problems on Wednesday and project suggestions on Friday throughout the summer. The beauty of our blog is that I monitor all posts and comments before they are shared publically and I have subscribed to a version that means we have no adds on our site. It will be interesting to see if any of the children find time to post and comment once summer begins.
  • As always, the class would be super-psyched to receive comments on our class blog and on their individual posts as well.
  • Typing Pal – is a keyboarding program that each child is set up to use through the eboard. All the children have done some of the exercises in school and know how to use the program. It is great practice and will really help them as more and more of their writing will be done on computers. Once they’ve practiced they can apply their new skills by creating a post on their blogs.

life is good or...is it?